Despite the fact that I've had this blog up for over 11 months now, I got some 15% of my total traffic ever in the last three days. So, thank you all! More updates later this week!

brsmblog.com daily traffic over the last month!

1. What's funny about this, is that that post took me all of about 30 mins to write. I already had the links saved from when I'd first come across them. I didn't really think it was very good, but wanted to write something that wouldn't take too long. On average, a total synthesis write up can take me 4 or 5 times that long to write, and they don't even get 1/10 of the traffic that post has. Oh, well. The response it got was still incredible!

Unique content for blogs is always the best. Unfortunately total synthesis is not really unique since everyone has access to that information. The info you put in that post is something most don’t have or wouldn’t be looking. That’s really what I and most others want to read. Not saying you should drop the synthesis but sometimes you should go with what’s working. Keep up the good work.

I agree about unique content. My aim is never to just reprint other people’s work – whenever I write a total synthesis type post I try and add as much extra info as I can, and put it in perspective with past work. I do think that some people enjoy the total synthesis posts, as 1. not everyone has literature access; 2. not everyone with literature access knows what to read; and 3. reading papers is hard. I also think that having a few cool syntheses written up here is also a good resource for people looking to set problem sessions or give talks. I actually enjoy writing non-total synthesis posts more, and as I said above, they take much less time, but they are much harder to have ideas for! Looking at my most popular articles list it’s a fairly good mix of the two types so I’ll keep writing both for now!

Incidentally, if anyone either has anything they think I should cover, or if anyone would like to guest blog here, please get in touch! More variety and more updates are better for everyone!

Same here. I draw cartoons and every now and then there is something relevant(ish) to a Pipeline story, so I will post a link. Phenomenal how quickly it happens – can almost see the spike in real time.